Yes. Throughout history, people have almost always built their settlements close to major bodies of (fresh) water. For example, you’d be hard-pressed to find a major city anywhere in the world that doesn’t have at least a stream near where it was founded, if not a full-blown river that still runs through the middle of it.
The creek is 3 feet wide in places and can dry up during dry seasons. The “lake” is 3 feet deep. The city was founded there because the governor owned land on the bald prairie, not the river valley where the fort and city already existed. Water is piped in from a lake several miles away.
If you look at the top 10 cities, all of them have a river, except Mexico City. That’s the real outlier. Large cities require lots of water, and that city is a really weird exception.
Tenochtitlan was a “floating city”, with artificial islands created on top of Lake Texcoco. Mexico City was founded on top of the ruins of the old Aztec capital and the lake was mostly drained.
To overcome the problems of drinking water, the Aztecs built a system of dams to separate the salty waters of the lake from the rain water of the effluents.
Yes. Throughout history, people have almost always built their settlements close to major bodies of (fresh) water. For example, you’d be hard-pressed to find a major city anywhere in the world that doesn’t have at least a stream near where it was founded, if not a full-blown river that still runs through the middle of it.
Let me introduce you to Regina.
That would appear to have been founded after the invention of water bottles.
The creek is 3 feet wide in places and can dry up during dry seasons. The “lake” is 3 feet deep. The city was founded there because the governor owned land on the bald prairie, not the river valley where the fort and city already existed. Water is piped in from a lake several miles away.
Las Vegas being the exception that kind of proves the rule.
If you look at the top 10 cities, all of them have a river, except Mexico City. That’s the real outlier. Large cities require lots of water, and that city is a really weird exception.
Tenochtitlan was a “floating city”, with artificial islands created on top of Lake Texcoco. Mexico City was founded on top of the ruins of the old Aztec capital and the lake was mostly drained.
A city that’s barely a hundred years old isn’t really relevant when talking about history of the human race predating the invention of bottles.
Earliest glass bottles are thought to be from 1500 BC according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_bottle. Even plastic bottles might be twice as old as Vegas according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_plastic_development but that depends on definition of plastic.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_Wash